What is your first idea when you consider, “I need to make more money – I’m not putting anything away in savings.” Part-time job? That’s the most often heard response. Creating passive income? What in the heck is that? However, when you take into account that you only have 24 hours in your day, and some of them you HAVE to use for sleep, it leaves you with little time to invest in another job, and even less time to recuperate from your full-time job. Not a pretty picture. Passive income helps you earn money when you’re not directly exchanging time or skill for it. It is the road to true financial freedom, and it’s not that hard to get started.

The Limitations of the Work/Time Exchange

Most people exchange time for money – going to work, performing a skill or service, and receiving a paycheck. When you break down work that way, it’s very simplistic. One of the realities of this work/time exchange is that it severely limits your income potential. You only have so many hours per day that are available for you to exchange for money.

For instance:

If you make $15 per hour, and you work with two weeks of time off for good behavior per year, that is $31,200 per year. If you work for 45 years at this salary, you will gross $1,404,000. That sounds great! But consider: that number is your gross salary. You’re taking home significantly less than that, and that is the maximum that you are going to make. That’s your limit in your lifetime – if you work at that salary for that time. Now obviously, you might get raises, and you might make more than that per hour – but you are still limited by the number of hours you can work, and the amount of money you can make in your lifetime.

Breaking Out of the Work/Time Exchange

We all have to work, even those of us who may not have a day job (you lucky few!). What our work looks like can look drastically different, and we can break out of the limitations I described above. You are not limited in your life to an hourly wage or a yearly salary. If you choose to invest in a passive income stream and put your money to work for you: you can exponentially increase your earning potential, and break out of that limitation.

Passive income is absolutely not a get-rich-quick idea. It takes time, effort, and investment. The investment it requires is either time and effort, or money – and if you’re like me, the time and effort option is the only option. While it’s not a fast method, it’s a sure one, and if you put the work in now, you will be a lot less stressed later on.

In order to break out of that work/time exchange, let’s talk a little about the investments that you’re going to need to make. It’s possible, and even fairly simple, to leave behind the reliance on a paycheck!

Investing Money

The easiest way to create passive income is to invest money in dividends, real estate, or high yield savings accounts. These are great ways to supplement your income, but the kicker is that you have to have excess money to invest. Investing in real estate is difficult if you’re not prepared to saddle up with at least a $1000 investment, and dividends require some research and a brokerage account. Keep in mind that there is an opportunity for a capital gain, but the needle isn’t going to move very fast until you are investing quite a lot.

Investing Time and Effort

If you don’t have a lump sum of unused cash lying around, then the other option is the investment of time and effort. This is where I’ve been working, and it’s been amazing so far. There are several ways to start your journey towards passive income streams, like writing an e-book, creating tutorials and selling them, or starting a YouTube channel.

The best way to begin your journey, in my opinion, is through affiliate marketing. What in the world is affiliate marketing? Well, say you like camping. You buy your camping stuff either online, so you research what you want to buy, and take other people’s experiences and recommendations before you purchase.

In affiliate marketing, YOU are the one making the recommendations for things you love and know are fabulous, and in return, you get either a flat fee or a commission of any sale you direct to your “affiliates”, such as Amazon, Walmart, or any number of places. You are getting paid to advertise – but you’re just telling people what you know!

You don’t have to be a writer to do this – no English degree required – you just have to be able to talk to someone. Imagine the last time you got excited about a new something and told your friend about it. That’s all you have to do! Sounds easy? It is. The kicker with this is that it does take time! Don’t quit your day job and then become an affiliate marketer. It takes a bit of time to build up your authority – but with consistency, you’ll start seeing income rolling in, just because you shared your opinion and knowledge, and showed people where to go.

So You Want to Try Affiliate Marketing

Telling people awesome stuff about things you love and getting paid for it? Sounds great, right? How to get started? Well, first you need a website, and then you need to know what to write on that website, and how to make it look nice. Overwhelmed yet? No need to be! There’s a community that has been doing this since 2005, and they’re making it easy for you. Yes, you bring the time and effort, but Wealthy Affiliatehas the training and help to get you started and help you be successful.

It’s free to get started, and if you never want to pay – you don’t have to! You’ll have access to training, great support through forums, and a crazy amount of driven and successful people providing tips and tricks, feedback on your website, and ideas to help you succeed and become independent of your 9-5. At Wealthy Affiliate, the owners, Kyle and Carson, are directly invested in ensuring that you succeed. They are available to help, and you will also encounter mentors who can provide excellent feedback to make sure you’re on the right path.

Did I mention that they host your free website and help you design it? Oh! Right! Wealthy Affiliate helps you build your website, design it, and get started writing the right sort of content to get you noticed fast. All of this, for free. Of course, there’s a more in-depth premium membership – but you can do almost everything without paying a cent. Check it out, and get started on your passive income increase journey today!

2 thoughts on “Creating Passive Income When You Don’t Have Money To Invest – A Road to True Financial Freedom”

Having been self employed on a number of occasions and experiencing what happens when you can’t work, the time versus income factor becomes really important. As a consultant, I charged a pretty good rate, but that was only for the hours I worked. Some weeks I’d work a lot, other weeks perhaps only a few hours, but my fixed overheads didn’t reduce. I’ve been off work with a back injury for a year and tried a number of different ideas to earn a living while waiting for surgery. This got me asking myself, what is scalable and can work for me into my retirement? I think you have it right here! Click:)

Thanks for stopping by, Luigi!! Finding the right way to work that isn’t dependent on what you can do with your body and time is huge! I truly hope this works for you, and if you have any questions, please let me know!